It's Going To Cost $20 Billion To Keep 9,800 Troops In Afghanistan Next Year

It's Going To Cost $20 Billion To Keep 9,800 Troops In Afghanistan Next Year

RICHARD SISK, MILITARY.COM

MAY 29, 2014, 6:08 PM


President Obama's decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2016 set the stage for major reductions in the account for war funding, or Overseas Contingency Operations.
Pentagon planners have yet to decide how much the OCO budget, sometimes called the supplemental budget, will be trimmed from the tentative $79 billion figure that was sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget in March.

However, White House officials have said it would likely cost about $20 billion to keep 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan next year as President Obama has proposed.

"The OCO budget is still in development. We don't have a timeline" for submitting a proposal to OMB, Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said Thursday.

The delay in offering an OCO budget stemmed from the bitter dispute between the Obama administration and Afghan President Hamid Karzai on the conduct of the war. Karzai refused to sign a Bilateral Security Agreement for a post-2014 U.S. troop presence, making it nearly impossible for Pentagon planners to project a Fiscal 2015 OCO budget.

Obama announced his plan Tuesday to keep 9,800 troops in Afghanistan in 2015, cut the number of troops in half in 2016, and have all troops out in 2017. This offered planners a general outline of the funding needs.

In background briefings and in statements, White House and OMB officials have said that the FY2015 proposal will include $5 billion for a "Counter-Terrorism Partnerships Fund" — a proposal Obama offered in his West Point commencement speech Wednesday.

In a statement Wednesday, the OMB said that the FY 2015 OCO request "will include funding for the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan and DoD's supporting presence in the broader region in [fiscal] 2015, and it will reflect a continued downward trajectory of war-related spending."

Last year, the Defense Department requested $79.4 billion in OCO funding and Congress eventually increased that figure to $85 billion for 2015.

In recent years, OCO budgets have generally been in the $80 billion range, down from the $187 billion in OCO funding for FY2008 at the height of the Iraq war.

Legendary Marine General Slams Obama's Timetable For Afghanistan

ARMIN ROSEN

MAY 29, 2014, 1:40 PM


James Mattis, a retired four-star general and perhaps the most famous living U.S. Marine, was sharply critical of the Obama administration's timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan in statements made to The Army Times today.

The administration's plan leaves behind a residual force of around 10,000 soldiers after the end of combat operations in late 2014 followed by a full drawdown by the end of 2016. Mattis, a former head of U.S. Central Command, worries that this will give the Taliban a chance to regain control over Afghanistan while communicating a lack of U.S. resolve and commitment in the region.

According to the Army Times, "Mattis ... said announcing a lower U.S. troop number and setting a specific withdrawal date 'sends a message' to U.S. allies that it is not fully committed to the fight against the Taliban. 'Why does the U.S. government have to level the playing field for the enemy?'"

"We want to crush the enemy's hope to win through violence," Mattis added. "Yet we have now given the enemy hope that if they hang on until our announced withdrawal date they can perhaps come back."

This isn't the first time that Mattis has come out against the idea of a publicly announced timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. In July 2013, Mattis told the Aspen Security Forum that "[you] don't ever tell the adversary in advance what you're not going to do."

After the end of major combat operations in late 2014, the U.S.' presence in Afghanistan will likely be confined to a couple of major bases, most likely Bagram Airfield, outside of the Afghan capital of Kabul, and Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold in the country's east. Mattis implied that this residual force wasn't large enough even for a reduced training and Special Operations Forces-centered mission, and said that military planners had wanted to leave a few thousand more troops in the country: "We asked for 13,600 troops several years ago," he told The Army Times.

Mattis's criticisms carry a certain authority beyond his accomplished service record: The landmark 2006 update to the Army's Counterinsurgency Handbook was a project of Mattis and General David Petraeus — later the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Handbook, which emphasized a society-wide rather than narrowly military view of conflict, is widely recognized as one of the driving forces behind the U.S.' changes in strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mattis helped usher in the modern era of U.S. counter-insurgency — a period that might end with a phased pullout from Afghanistan that the ex-general objects to.